Burford Capital Share Discussion Threads

[knowing] 08/8/2019 13:09

Massive BUY now

[babbler] 08/8/2019 13:07

depends if they got greedy and opened more.... not MW... others.

[timw3] 08/8/2019 13:07

Baron investments also gone long!!!

Baron Investments
@barondaytrading
·
7m
Some #BUR joining #SXX in shorter term trade up. Required limits.

[traderglt] 08/8/2019 13:07

Shorts on fire ? What a ridiculous statement considering their entry price !

[tsmith2] 08/8/2019 13:06

You do that old boy.can't wait for the conference call

[minerve 2] 08/8/2019 13:02

Let's see when the dust settles..

[tsmith2] 08/8/2019 13:01

Lol! Bull trap, more like bear squeeze.the muddywaters report I said was more like the cable car's guy attempt big move up coming directors will be buying big too!

[blueteam] 08/8/2019 13:00

has £10 value so they say wow

[mryl] 08/8/2019 12:59

Holy smoke what an RNS! extremelly bullish. It's boom time, glad I kept adding all the way from 850 to 430!

[minerve 2] 08/8/2019 12:57

Could be a bull trap...

[littlepuppi7] 08/8/2019 12:57

Shorts on fire.

[sweet karolina2] 08/8/2019 12:56

sophia,

There are lots of different ways to analyse the same raw data.

MW's point is basically that the way BUR does it flatters reality and I think most people who have dived into the the cash flow statement agree with that.

The next key question is can you trust the balance sheet. MW give a number of examples where you need to doubt it, for me the most worrying part was the contingent liabilities from some of the cases that were going wrong (ie BUR could end up with an extra bill to pay rather than it just being a straight forward zero) that are not reflected at all - if MW found the ones they reported, how many more were not found?

At best this company is not worth anything like £3bn it was valued at. Lots of people are guessing what it really is worth, because nobody can trust any of the metrics that they have used to value it in the past.

I don't think BUR is another Quindell, far from it, however there are parallels where profits look great, NAV is increasing but overall CF is stubbornly negative and you are supposed to believe that there is a massive bulge of it in the pipeline waiting to start gushing out in future years, but it never does.

I think BUR had a nice business model when it first began and by being careful with which cases it invested in it was able to generate real cash from which to pay dividends.

Then 2 things happened, Management tried to scale up, which involves taking on cases which maybe in the past they would have said no to AND a few things went wrong, eg Napa, and rather than come clean and take the hit, which would have made raising the cash for growth more difficult and expensive, they fudged a few things to keep IRR and ROIC looking good (why does the CFO only stay for a year and now it is CEO's wife who gets to sign all this off).

CF is much harder to fudge than other things, yes as you rightly say there are ways to confuse, but at the end of the day the change to cash in the bank has to match real cash in and real cash out (there are some examples of mega frauds where even this is not true, but BUR is not in that category).

From 2014 onward, there are big apparent cash generations from operations which then get wiped out by working capital changes, then comes tax and interest etc and it all ends up with cash flowing out not in. Good luck trying to work all the stuff out in the middle, my basic analysis looks at the overall picture ie looks at the wood not the trees.

[tsmith2] 08/8/2019 12:54

makes muddywaters look very very very silly!!

[global nomad] 08/8/2019 12:51

and now the directors will buy too....

[babbler] 08/8/2019 12:51

people buying just in case. Mms raising just in case.

[minerve 2] 08/8/2019 12:50

Don't believe anyone can read an RNS that quick.

[littlepuppi7] 08/8/2019 12:50

Going to go ballistic on that.

[boyblue] 08/8/2019 12:49

What's happening?

[minerve 2] 08/8/2019 12:48

I agree, IFRS has probably been caught napping and has failed to keep abreast of new business sectors such as this. Remove the ambiguity by tightening the standard.

[n0rbie] 08/8/2019 12:39

I have held their 6.25% bonds for several years, they have always traded at a premium. The bond market reaction yesterday was very extreme indeed, perhaps because they are also held largely by retail investors.